


Hydra Readings

by Gaia_bing



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amputee Bucky Barnes, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Romance, Shrunkyclunks, Spirits, Steve is still in the plane under water, Supernatural Elements, scam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2018-12-31 01:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12121794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gaia_bing/pseuds/Gaia_bing
Summary: Alexander Pierce is running the highly successful Medium Service called Hydra Readings.But it's really all just a scam, taking advantage of gullible and heart-broken people.His eager biological son named Brock and his reluctant one named Bucky are both part of the whole thing.Ghosts weren't real.And talking to spirits was an impossible thing.So then, if all these things were facts...Why did the long-thought dead Captain America, whose body was still lying somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic, appeared inside Bucky's bedroom,And punched him right in the face?





	1. Right for the picking

**Author's Note:**

> New shorter story by yours truly. This one is back to be in chronological order *and* this is my first attempt at the whole "Shrunkyclunks" thing. Hope you guys enjoy! :D

Mrs. Hollswell had lost her dear husband Ronnie about two years ago to a sudden and fierce heart attack.

  
Mrs. Hollswell was 86 years-old and gullible as fuck.

  
She was a _perfect_ fruit for the picking.

  
******************

  
"Ah, Rosaline, thank you so much for taking the time to come here on this lovely day! I hope the trip wasn't too rough on you?" a charming man, going by the name Alexander Pierce, said with a grand smile, as he opened the front door of his house and greeted the slightly hunched woman.

  
"No, no, my dear. But I must say, the people that I usually try for this kind of thing usually go where I live and not the other way around." the elderly lady said as she slowly wobbled over the threshold of the mansion-sized home and rested her dark shawl over the offered coat-rack.

  
Alexander, ever the suave and smart man that he was, already had concocted the perfect answer to the usually asked question: "Well, Rosa, is it okay if I call you Rosa?" he asked, making the woman in question slightly blush. He continued as he offered her his elbow and the two of them walked further inside the house:

  
"Well Rosa, those people are absolute amateurs! They don't have the slightest clue at what they're doing, but trust me, my dear, with me, you don't have a thing to worry about."

  
Rosaline's crinkled eyes lit up. "Well, it's good to know that people like you are out there, helping people that need it just like me. And I have to say, your company name...what was it, Hiba Beavings?"

  
"Hydra Readings." Alexander corrected her.

  
"Yes, Hydra Readings, and that little smiling octopus for the logo were all so charming that I just had to call you up and set a meeting with you." Rosaline said, as the pair entered the room where everything would take place.

  
"Yes, yes they are very charming. But not as charming as you, my dear." Alexander responded with his widest smile, as he lead her to her seat in front a giant round table, while he took his own chair right in front of the elderly woman.

  
He took a glance at the red returning to her wrinkled cheeks and thought to himself:

  
_Yep, right for the fucking picking._

  
*********************

  
"HHMMMMMMMMM!....HHHMMMMMMM!....Spirit World, I call on you, it is I, your humble servant, Alexander. Please, open your doors and allow the one who was once known as Robby..." Alexander said, seemingly in a trance.

  
"Ronnie..." Rosaline corrected the man holding on to her hands.

  
"I apologize. Allow the one that was once known as Ronnie to come through and communicate with the World of the Living................HHHHMMMMMM!" called out the medium.

  
Alexander opened his eyes and looked around frantically, as if searching for something.

  
In a hushed voice, he dared to ask in the air around him, his hands still interlocked tightly with his ~~victim~~ , client.

  
"Ronnie? If you can hear me, knock loudly three times."

  
He shifted his chair a few inches forward, the grinding noise resonating all through the old-looking house.

  
Everything was quiet for a just a moment and just as Rosaline was starting to give up hope of ever talking to her dear husband...

  
_BANG! BANG! BANG!_ was suddenly heard from the ceiling.

  
"Oh my goodness, Ronnie!" Mrs. Hollswell exclaimed out loud, tears gathering in her eyes in pure happiness.  
Alexander fist-bumped himself inside his brain.

  
_The fish got the bait. Time to do some reeling._

  
He silently moved his right foot closer to the his left one, giving the signal.

  
The table they'd been sitting by suddenly started to shake and move all by itself.

  
He closed his eyes and said in a trembling voice: "Oh my goodness! The Spirit World is upset! It wants to pull back Ronnie through its doors! There's no way to stop it! Unless... _unless_..."

  
"Unless what?" asked Rosaline, tears now streaming down her face. She'd finally had the chance to connect with her dear husband and it'd be taken away from her just a second later?

  
Alexander opened his eyes.

  
"Unless we appease it...with an additional two hundred bucks." he said with a finality in his tone.

  
Mrs. Hollswell didn't have to think twice.

  
"I'll go get my purse."

  
And with that, she got up to get her things.

  
And with that, Hydra Readings caught its daily fish.

  
*****************

  
"...four, five, six hundreds for you. Two, Tree, five hundreds for you. _And_ the rest for me." Alexander said after the session was over, Rosaline had gone home with a smile on her face and an empty wallet...

  
And everyone that had participated in the session without her knowledge had come out of their hiding place.

  
Brock, his one and only biological son, smiled at the pile of cash in his hand. "You really squeezed that one for everything that she got, pops." he cackled out.

  
Pierce proudly smiled and answered: "Yeah, well, it's just like I taught you: it's the loneliest and neediest people that are the most cashable. You go in for the kill and you twist, twist and twist that knife until there's nothing left, not even a flattened penny."

  
James "Bucky" Barnes, his other but this one adopted son, looked at the meager five bills of one hundred dollars in slight disgust. "Yeah, it's all great and everything, but three thousand dollars of "Spirit World Appeasement" in _one_ session, really? Isn't it a bit...you know, overboard?" he dared to ask.

  
"Hey, you're just jealous because you got ceiling banging duties this time around, while I got to shine under the table." Brock answered and Bucky was about to retort, when their father held up his hand to silence them both.

  
"Now, now! No time to fight, boys!" he reprimanded them. He turned his sights to his adopted son and continued: "Now, I know it might look a bit overboard to you Buck, but without the money..." he started.

  
"...no fours walls, no new wheels, and most importantly, no new arm in the future maybe." finished the long-haired man. He knew the song and dance. He'd heard it plenty of times ever since this whole business had started. He'd probably heard it even more than...

A pat on his amputated shoulder brought him out of his thoughts.

  
"Now, I don't know about you guys, but this whole day has rendered me completely starving! I'll tell you what: you'll go put your cash in your rooms and I'll call us up some much-needed Taiwanese. What do you say?" Alexander offered.

  
And, just like always, one of the shadow member of Hydra Readings eagerly responded with a _"Hell yeah!"_

  
While the reluctant, but still obligated one slightly nodded his head and responded with a quiet:

  
_"Alright."_

  
***************

  
Bucky rubbed the side of his head with his only available hand as he entered his bedroom.

  
Great, another migraine. Again.

  
He'd need to go to the drugstore and get something stronger than Advil. _Again._

 

Hopefully that didn't mean that _another_ one would slip out. **_Again._**

  
He landed on his bed in with a thud and loudly sighed.

  
Why did his mom had to fall in love with that bastard when his dad had left town with his brand new mistress?

  
Why did his mom and only blood sibling had to go on that damn train ride and leave him all alone?

  
Why had he decided to go to that damn war and returned with an arm blown off his shoulder and voices residing inside his head?

  
Why had he accepted to get into the so-called "family business" that his adopted father and brother had set up a few months beforehand?

  
He already knew the answers to all these questions.

  
He knew that as long as his father was happy, there would be a roof over his head, food in his stomach and no threats to go back to the loony bin.

  
He knew that as long as he was participating in this whole scheme, he at least had some sort of a job and some sort of a salary, however dirty all these things might be.

  
And, as he turned his head and slightly smiled at what was standing on the top of his desk,

  
As long as he was getting some sort of salary, he could afford his favorite thing in the whole wide world...

  
His _Captain America_ Comics.

  
He grabbed the thin book inside his right hand and looked at the cover.

  
Everybody knew the myth of Captain America: a thin, frail young man wanting to be a part of the first World War, he'd taken part of a strange experimentation that resulted in him getting super strength along with other super abilities.

  
Everybody also knew how his story ended: somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic, after downing a plane full of nukes that was supposed to be a mind-blowing gift for the whole city of New York.

  
Yeah, it was because of him that everyone, including Bucky, had the chance to still have a place named New York, and more precisely Brooklyn, to call home.

  
And it also certainly didn't hurt that every piece of media that Bucky had ever read or seen about the War Veteran showed Steve Rogers to be hot as hell, serumed or de-serumed.

  
And who could really blame the long-haired man to have developed a slight crush on the hero of his childhood and the fantasy of his adult life?

  
Bucky knew this was a silly thing to do, but he couldn't help himself.

  
He began to waltz around the room, holding the comic in front of him as his dancing partner.

 

He began to quietly sing to himself:

 _"Who's strong and brave here to save the American Way?_  
_Who vows to fight like a man for what's right, night and day?_  
_Who will campaign door to door for America?_  
_Carry the flag shore to shore for America?_  
_From Hoboken to Spokane?"_

He was about to answer the silly question himself, while giggling like an idiot...

 

When the man in question, in his fleshy form and not in his paper form, turned him around with a slight shove and answered it for him:

  
_"Me, you asshole."_

  
And then proceeded to punch Bucky right on the nose with all of his might.


	2. Meeting Mr. America

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What the hell had just happened? Who, or what, had just punched Bucky straight in the face like that?
> 
> Was it an hallucination, a visual one instead of one of the many, many auditory ones Bucky had developed the habit (and the harsh headaches that came along with it) of getting?
> 
> Or, was the man standing in front of him actually his lifetime celebrity crush?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eep! I never thought this little idea of mine would get so much attention! Thanks everyone, it really warms my heart that you guys are liking this so far. :) Hopefully the next installment is as good as you expected it to be when you first read this. :D

Pain assessment, by Bucky Barnes:

  
Knees and elbow: scraped by rolling over onto the floor,

  
Face: Hurting like hell, especially in the nasal area,

  
Head: Migraine... _gone_? Which meant only one thing...

  
Great. Just, _great_.

  
Another hallucination had slipped out.

  
And this one was a visual one to boot.

  
Damn it, he'd thought he'd gotten the hang of everything after getting out of that damn place seven months earlier.

  
But, despite that fact, Bucky stayed calm and closing his eyes, he repeated his mantra he'd been prescribed to chant whenever this kind of event would end up happening, changing it slightly for the occasion (and his manner of speaking):

  
_"Vour bop beal, vour bop beal, boping bap pi bee is beal..."_

  
There, that usually did the trick.

  
He opened his eyes and crap...

  
The hallucination was still there.

  
Sighing to himself, he changed his now bloodied tissue, held up a brand new one against his battered nose and tried again, this time a little bit louder:

  
_"Vour bop beal, vour bop beal, boping bap pi bee is beal..."_

  
And..

.  
Still there.

  
_Goddamnit._

  
Would he have to go get an appointment with Dr. Zola to reinforce his blocking technique?

  
Sighing once more and closing his eyes, he tried again, this time really wanting to get the point out:

  
_"VOUR BOP BEAL! VOUR BOP BEAL!! BOPING BAP PI BEE IS-!!!"_

  
A slap at the back of the head and a cried out:

  
"Would you stop that already? This is getting pretty annoying!" both interrupted his loud belting.

  
Bucky opened his eyes, shocked.

  
Had...had the hallucination just scolded him just now?

  
He was about to start his chant once more, when:

  
"Did you not hear what I just said?" the hallucination asked, but Bucky's eyes didn't budge an inch this time around.

  
Dropping his now dried-out tissue into the waste basket and still with his eyes closed, he simply said: "Well, I would stop, if you were acting like a good little hallucination and just go away already."

  
"You...you think that I'm an hallucination?" he heard the voice say in a shocked whisper.

  
Bucky dared to crack open an eye and...

  
_Still_ there. Crap.

  
It was still there and it was now looking seriously pissed.

  
And by god, if Steve Rogers looked hot on paper when he was angry, he was even better looking in the flesh, removing his scowl and eyeballing him like that...

  
Bucky suddenly shook his head. What the hell was he doing? Had he been drooling at one of his hallucination of his just now?

  
"Well?" the man standing in front of him asked, now tapping his foot on the floor.

  
Well, if the only way to get rid of this thing was to talk to it, then maybe Bucky should do like the Romans and...

  
"Of course you're an hallucination. Because Steve Rogers died in 1944 when he downed a plane into the Atlantic and right now, it's 2011, so I think you're a bit late to the welcome home party there, pal." he finally said.

  
Now, out of all the reactions he'd thought the man standing in front of him would have, from suddenly disappearing like Bucky hoped he would, to laughing out loud like a maniac because he already knew that it was 2011 since he was a product of Bucky's own mind, to getting even more pissed and breaking even more parts of his body, the one that ended up happening was not one that Bucky expected at all....

  
"It's...It's _201_ 1?" whispered a now completely defeated-looking Steve Rogers, who dropped his scowl onto the wooden floor and sinking his body right next to it.

  
"Well, yeah. What year did you thought this was?" asked Bucky, seemingly confused that something coming from his own mind seemed so lost and perplexed about the subject.

  
"I thought this was 1944." admitted Steve, looking down at the floor. "Peggy! Is Peggy Carter...?"

  
Bucky smiled. Of course an hallucination of his would ask him that, since Peggy Carter had always been a centerpiece of the Captain America comics and pieces of media about the legendary hero that Bucky just loved to fill his mind and imagination with.

  
"Well, from what I heard, she's still alive but...let's just say she doesn't really have that vibrance and fire that made her such a force not to be reckoned with back in your time." Bucky said, with a an attempt at a sympathetic smile.

"And the Commandos?" asked Steve.

  
This made Bucky's slight smile immediately drop from his face.

  
The Commandos? Who the _hell_ were the Commandos?

  
He'd never read or seen anything about something called the Commandos that was in any way related to Captain America in his entire life.

  
"I...I... I don't know anything about any Commandos...sir, Mr. America...Mr. Rogers...sir..." he stammered and, taking a good look at the...at the...

  
At whatever it was that was sitting on the wooden floor of his bedroom, with a disappointed look upon its face.

 

Bucky gulped out loud and dropped right next to the other man in a loud thump, looking ahead and finally whispering:

  
"You're...you're not an hallucination?"

  
That seemed to bring Steve out of his earlier funk. He whipped his head around and looked confusedly at the long-haired man as he said:

  
"Really? This is was what convinced you that I'm not coming from your head? Not that I pretty much kicked your ass about ten minutes ago?"

  
"Hey!" cried out Bucky, putting his right hand on his hip in indignation.

  
"Oh, don't you dare look so high and mighty, Mister Ghost Simulator! There I was, happily fishing, when the next thing that I see is you banging loudly on your bedroom floor, while another guy is hiding under a table and moving it around all shakily and the like and another, older looking one taking advantage of some poor old lady and keeping asking her for loads and loads of money so that maybe, just maybe, she could talk to her dead husband. And how much time did that "conversation" of theirs lasted? Oh, that's right....thirty freakin' seconds!" Steve answered, getting up from his spot upon the bedroom floor.

  
Bucky quickly followed suit and asked: "Fishing? Where the hell were you before you got here?" he asked. If this man wasn't an hallucination and was in fact the real deal, shouldn't he have been on the other side since a very, _very_ long time?

  
Oh god, had Captain America come straight from Heaven to kick his ass because of the scam he was pulling along with his step-father and brother?!

  
"I...I don't know where the hell I was before coming here, actually." admitted Steve, running a large hand through his blond hair. "I remember the plane and the ice and then...I woke up next to a lake. I was how I was before all of this happened to me." he pointed the red and blue costume adorning his beefy body. "There was a pole and so I told myself: _"What the hell?"_ and then I started putting it in and out of the water. Wherever I was before coming here, I wasn't where I thought I'd end up when I downed that plane, because there was nobody else but me in there. And if there's one thing I do know about Heaven, is that it' supposed to be filled by the people that you cared about all throughout your life." he added, once again looking down at the floor with a defeated look.

  
Bucky listened to the other man's tale while thinking about the reason this whole thing was going on. If Steve Rogers hadn't been in Heaven, then what the hell had-

  
"Your body was never found." he finally concluded. "You're not in Heaven because your body was never found."

  
If Bucky had never known anything about any Commandos, he'd had in fact read and heard plenty about how no one had ever found Steve Rogers' downed plane and therefore, his dead body.

  
"Then, maybe you can help me? I mean, I did come here with the purpose to smash more than your nose, but maybe I was able to come from wherever I was through out here because you're meant to get me to the other side!" a smile reappeared on Steve's now hopeful-looking face.

  
Bucky held up his hand. "Oh, no... **no** , **_no_** , **_no_**. Okay, maybe you're not an illusion or hallucination or anything like that, but whatever the hell you are, I'm not helping you, alright? I already have a lot of things to handle in my life, helping out Captain America find his probably long-decomposed body in the middle of the Atlantic is so _not_ something I wanna add to that list, thank you very much." he exclaimed.

  
And now Steve was right back to looking pissed. "You know, you're damn lucky I used every ounce of strength that I had to square you right in the face and scoff you life that afterward, because believe me, if I could touch anything right now, I'd grab you by the damn ear, get you on a plane and _make_ you look for my dead body." he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  
Bucky smugly looked at the other man. He was about to add something, when suddenly:

  
_"HEY! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN THERE, BUCK?! IF YOU DON'T COME DOWN HERE THIS SECOND, YOU'RE GOING TO MISS DINNER!"_ was heard from downstairs.

  
Steve squinted his eyes at the man that was now walking away from him. He warned with a wagging finger: "This ain't over, you know."

  
Bucky did the unthinkable: he pulled his tongue out at Captain America. "Try me." he exclaimed as he opened his bedroom to get a dose of some fine Taiwanese food.

  
Steve gasped. "Jerk!" he called out to the exiting man.

  
_Oh he'd try, he'd try alright_ , he swore to himself.


	3. A little punk worth recovering

Steve Rogers was a lot of things. Bucky had knows that fact ever since the very first book he'd ever read about the man when he'd been a young child.

  
What every piece of media he'd consumed about the subject had failed to teach him however...

  
Was that Steve Rogers, among all the things that he was...

  
Was just a damn little _punk_.

  
Who, when he really wanted something done, didn't mind becoming a literal parasite to obtain it...

  
By poking the _hell_ out of people.

  
And _poke_ and _poke_ and _pok_ e he'd wake up Bucky with.

 

And _poke_ and _poke_ and _poke_ he'd go through the day along with Bucky.

  
And _poke_ and _poke_ and _poke_ he'd annoy Bucky to sleep at night.

  
"You know, if punching me and hitting on the side of the head used up all your strength, how come poking me isn't?" asked Bucky during one especially annoying poking session.

  
"Oh, don't worry, it does. But I'm sure I'll find another way to annoy you even when I don't have any left." Steve smirked as he resumed his poking on a gravely sighing Bucky.

  
And what other way did he find to annoy the hell out of Bucky when his strength ended up running out?

  
Something much more pleasurable to his eyes and much more displeasurable to Bucky' ears:

  
_Singing_.

  
As off-key and as loud as possible.

  
**_" THE WHEELS ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND!!! ROUND AND ROUND, ROUND AND ROUND!!! THE WHEELS ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND!!! ALL THROUGH THE TOWN!!!!!"_**  he'd sing at the top of his lungs over and _over_ and **_over_** and **_over_** every hour of every day, sometimes deep into the night, much to Bucky's lack of sleep.

  
And all of that didn't include the unwanted and constant in-and-out poppings the spirit would do:

  
Inside his car, making Bucky almost crash it in uttermost shock,

  
Inside his bed, making Bucky bang his head in uttermost annoyance,

  
Inside his shower, making Bucky blush like crazy in uttermost shyness (and in Steve's bizarrely and seemingly uttermost approval.),

  
By day five of all of these going-ons, Bucky Barnes had enough.

  
He frantically reached out and swatted Steve's once again poking hand away. "Alright, okay! You win! I'm going to help you move on! If you would you just stop. doing. that. already-freakin'-ready!?" he yelled out.

  
Steve simply smiled and pulled his hand away. "Would you look at that? He understands!" he exclaimed, crossing his arms joyfully. "So, when do we start?"

  
Bucky slumped his whole body against his kitchen table, in uttermost giving up.

  
******************

  
"So, where exactly are we?" asked the spirit as he and Bucky entered a large building and then an even larger looking elevator.

  
" _Stark Industries_. The boss of the place works for Nick Fury of SHIELD, who's entire team's been trying to find your body almost the minute you decided to land that damn plane inside that damn water. You get to Tony Stark, you get to Fury, you get to your body and you get to move on. Kappeech?" Bucky explained.

  
"Uh, yeah. But do you really think it's going to be _that_ easy?" asked Steve as the ding of the right floor was heard.

  
Bucky smiled as the two of them stepped off. "Oh, please, he's seen people turning green when they're angry and Nordic Gods battle it out. I'm pretty sure a spirit is one of the less ludicrous thing he's ever going to hear about."

  
*******************

  
"That's the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard about!" yelled out Tony as he stormed out of his office.

  
From inside the place where he and Bucky had been talking for the past five minutes, Steve Rogers shook his head as he turned and looked at the other man.

  
"Oh, don't start, alright?" growled the one-armed man and with a sprint in his step, tried to catch up with the billionaire.

  
Good thing the other man he decided to take the stairs and not the elevator, because there was no way that Bucky would have caught up to him if he'd done so.

  
"Mr. Stark! Hold on! Please! Listen to me!" Bucky yelled out story after story he descended.

  
But Tony was having none of what had been his four o'clock had to say. "You can see Captain America! Steve Rogers can talk to you! Oh please, let me laugh at this."

  
He paused mid-third level stairwell, making the man following him stop in his tracks. "You know what? I _will_ in fact laugh at this: HAHAHAHA!" he barked out in a sarcastic manner.

  
"Please, Mr. Stark, you have to believe me!" Bucky tried and then began to descend the giant flight of stairs once again when he noticed the other man do the same thing.

  
"And why in the world should I do that, huh? Really, give me one good reason!" Tony called out as he descended the last step and was about to go outside.

  
Bucky didn't know what to do.

  
How could he make the billionaire believe him? Who _could_ in fact believe him? Why had he come here in the first place?

  
He didn't know anything right now, but the returning pounding inside his head.

  
Oh god, not again. And not _here_ of all places!

  
_"Tell him about the cereal box."_ he suddenly heard a woman's voice say.

  
**What?**

  
_"Tell him about the cereal box under his bed."_ he heard a man's voice whisper to him right beside his ear this time around.

  
Having no idea what had just happened (even though he had a nasty suspicions of what it really was), Bucky decided to put every ounce of credibility he possessed on the line by yelling out at the fastly retreating man:

  
_"Because how else would I know about the cereal box that you hide under your bed?"_

  
He was about to give up the whole thing and go back the way he'd just gone down when he suddenly heard tentative steps coming up the first couple of stairs.

  
"What did you just say?" asked the now completely looking stunned Tony Stark.

  
"I...I..." Bucky stammered out. Who'd said that to him just now? He blinked in confusion. Were the voices he'd kept hearing whenever a headache stroke him really just hallucinations, just like his family and Dr. Zola had told him over and over again?

Or...had they been something else this whole time? If Steve hadn't turned out to be an hallucination after all, then maybe the rest...

  
Bucky slightly smiled and raised his head: "I said: how else would I know about the _Tony the Tiger_ cereal box that you keep hidden under your bed, because that's how your parents nicknamed you when you were little?"

  
"I never, no one ever... How...how do you know this?" Tony was the one now stammering.

  
Bucky's smile widened."Your mother and father just told me about it. And they also love how you leave them a small bowl filled to the brink with milk on every anniversary of their deaths." he answered.

  
The billionaire took another couple of steps toward the long-haired man.

  
"I...You...You can hear my parents?" he whispered out, his eyes filling with tears.

  
"Yes, I can." nodded Bucky.

  
Tony's face slightly turned upwards. " _Mom, Dad..._ " he whispered.

  
"Love and miss you very, _very_ much." finished Bucky, putting his hand reassuringly on Tony's right arm.

  
Wiping at his eyes, Tony finally stared back up and said: "Wait, if you can hear my parents, then what you said about seeing Captain America..."

  
"Is absolutely, 100% true." answered Bucky, nodding his head.

  
Tony stayed silent for a couple of long seconds, before finally...

  
"Get your stuff ready. I'm going to arrange a meeting with Nick and a trip with the rest of SHIELD. We're going to go to the Arctic, find Captain America's body and help him move on the hell out of here, alright?"

  
Bucky smiled and turning his head, he noticed Steve standing right next to him, with just as a joyful expression on his own face.

  
They were doing this,

  
They were really doing _all_ of this...

  
*****************

  
_"You're not doing anything at all!"_ cried out his step-father when he learned this particular piece of news.

  
But Bucky, for the first time in his entire life, wasn't listening to the older man. He hopped the stairs of the large house towards his bedroom and pulled out a duffel bag out of his closet.

  
Alexander angrily walked into the room and asked: "Where the hell do you think you're going right now?"

  
Bucky wasn't even looking at him. He de-zipped his duffel bag as he responded: "I just told you a minute ago: I'm going to a meting with Nick Fury from SHIELD and along with his team, we're going to find Captain America's body in the Arctic."

  
Brock, who'd followed the pair, exclaimed in an incredulous tone: "And how are you going to do that, exactly? They've been searching for that son of a bitch for decades with the best crews and the best tools available and _you_ 're going to be the one to find him, just like that?"

  
This made him and his father cackle out loud.

  
But Bucky wasn't finding anything funny. "Well, yeah, I am. And I'd rather not you calling him a son of a bitch, alright? He's really sensitive about name-calling." he said, putting a rolled-up pair of pants inside his bag.

  
Alexander sighed in exasperation: "Great, just what I feared. First he hears them, then when we have our back turned, he can actually see them."

  
Wrapping his arm around the shoulders of his step-son, Alexander slowly explained, as if the other man was only in first grade:

  
"What you keep hearing and now seeing aren't real, son. They've always been and always will be just things that come and go inside your head. Your place isn't helping people on your own with imaginary sounds and sights, it's wringing them out of all of the cash along with the two of us with real sounds and real sights. At least, as far as they can tell, that is. So, drop this whole attempt at being independent shit and help us set up Mr. Crabtree for tomorrow morning, alright?"

  
He was about to chuckle once again at his own very bad joke, when Bucky yoinked himself always from his step-father semi-embrace in complete disgust:

  
"I thought that this whole thing that we were doing was my ticket to a great future, to be able to take care of myself again. But you know what? Really helping people is what's going to get myself to a better place in my life, not this. Never this."

  
This made Pierce's smiling face suddenly drop out.

  
"What, you don't want an even better car than the piece of crap that you've been driving? You don't want an even better house than the shack we've been living in? You don't want that prosthetic that I just know you've been salivating over ever since you came back from the war?" he said in an angrier tone.

  
Bucky shook his head and responded with a sneer: "I'd rather spent the rest of my life without an arm, without a car that was my sister's and without a house that was my mother's than accept even one more cent of your dirty money."

  
He was about to continue packing,

  
When he heard Alexander yell out, as he and Brock left his bedroom:

  
_"Yeah, well, let's see what kind of life you get after I go see Mr. Fury, tell him the part of your story that he doesn't know yet and he makes you go back to that loony bin that you seem to need so much for thinking that kind of bull-crap."_

 

Bucky dropped his duffel bag, completely lost.

 

His own step-father had just check-mated him.

 


	4. We need to talk about Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth comes out and a recovery is made.

Bucky knew exactly what was going to happen.

  
When everyone would find out his dirty little secret.

  
He'd never should have tried to do something on his own for once.

  
He'd never should have tried to go against his father's wishes for once.

  
No one would be able to trust him again,

  
No one would be able to even look at him in the eye again.

  
Because they'd all say the exact same thing,

  
Because they all _had_ said the exact same thing.

  
His bag suddenly hitting the floor startled a sitting Steve.

  
With a concerned look, the blond man stood up from Bucky's bed and asked: "What's wrong? Is the trip cancelled? What did you step-father and step-brother say?"

  
"There...there is no trip. This whole thing was a mistake from the get-go." Bucky finally whispered and raising his head, he exclaimed:

  
"And what the hell am I doing, talking into thin air again. You don't exist! You're nothing! Captain America's dead! He's been worm, or should I say shark, food for over seventy years now! Why in the world would his spirit come and ask me for help? ME!? A schmuck that can't even provide for himself and needs his step-father's dirty money to even try to get by. I'm a filthy scammer that helps take advantage of people in need. I'm a complete coward that can't even finish a damn war without getting his arm blown the fuck right off! I'm just a lonely, lonely boy who's only friends he has is his stupid voices inside his head!"

  
With that, he threw a good right hook inside the wall standing right next to him, leaving a golf-sized hole behind his fist.

  
Holding up his hands, what Bucky had thought was the spirit of Steve Rogers, but wasn't so sure anymore, tried to comfort the long-haired man: "Hey, you're not any of those things. At least, I personally don't believe so."

  
Bucky slightly laughed. He didn't care what the hell was standing in front of him anymore was, he just needed something or someone to finally hear him cry out:

  
"I mean, have you ever taken a good look at me?! I'm not normal, I've never been normal! I don't belong on the outside world, I belong back in that goddamn place, inside a straight jacket and pilled up the wazoo! Away from normal people, away from good people, away from people as spunky and as courageous and as everything that I could ever desire inside another human being as you!"

  
Steve was taken aback: "Really, I'm everything you desire? Even after I annoyed the hell out of you so that you can help me find my body?"

  
"Of course you're everything! It's been that way ever since I knew what _"Desiring"_ someone actually was! And I wanted to help you from the get-go, alright? I just needed a little push to get off my bum-ass and actually do something about it! But it's not like that matters anymore, since Alexander and Brock are going to go to Mr. Fury, they're going to tell them everything that's been wrong with me all this time and they are all going to think that I'm crazy and they're right. My father was right. He did a good thing by locking me up in that place and he never should have brought me out. And you know what? You should have finished the job when you appeared in my bedroom. I deserved _way_ more than getting my nose punched like that.

  
He raised his fist and was about to punch the wall again, when he found himself being engulfed inside a set of warm arms.

  
Those of Steve Rogers, of course.

  
"Hey! Hey...ssshhh..." the spirit said in a soothing voice.

  
"Your...your strength..." Bucky said as he tried to push back against the embrace.

  
"I don't care. You need it more than I do right now." Steve responded, to which the other man stopped fighting and let himself be buried inside the much-needed hug.

  
They stayed there for a moment, seeking comfort inside each other,

  
"I don't think you're normal." Steve finally admitted.

  
"Jeez, thanks for the vote of confidence." Bucky answered, rolling his eyes against the other man's shoulder.

  
"No, I mean, I actually think that you're one of the most extraordinary person that I ever had the chance to meet." Steve exclaimed, tightening his hold on the one-armed man.

  
"You...you really think that?" Bucky asked in a small voice.

  
"Of course I do! But, I mean, this could actually be your own mind trying to get your so called "bum-ass" out of your funk, since you seem to think that I've been nothing but thin air." Steve answered with a chuckle.

  
"Sh-Shut up!" replied Bucky, hitting his fist against Steve's strong chest with a slight laugh.

  
Another moment of comfortable silence ensued.

  
"Hey, Buck?"

  
"Hmm?"

  
"If...if I wasn't Captain America and I was just a guy existing in your time, would you have gone on a date with me?"

  
Bucky smiled despite himself. "Well, I would have kissed you first, because I like to do these kind of things out of order, actually." he stayed silent for just a second before asking himself:

  
"Hey, Steve?"

  
"Yeah?"

  
"If I'd been born seventy years ago and I wasn't some weirdo hearing what are pretty much the voices of the dead, would you have gone on a date with me?" he dared to ask with a slight smile.

  
Steve had a smile of his own as he reared his head back.

  
He whispered in the sincerest voice Bucky had ever heard anybody use:

  
"Not before kissing the hell out of you first."

  
Before disappearing right before Bucky's eyes, leaving his right arm grasping at thin air.

  
"Steve? _Steve_?!" he cried out, afraid he'd lost the other man for good.

  
But a whisper by his ear ended his francticness:

  
_"Sorry about that, 'shouldn't have try to do this for so long."_

  
Bucky regained his breath and sat on the top of his bed.

  
"So, what am I supposed to do now?" he asked out loud.

  
_"Well, we go see Mr. Fury and just hope for the best."_ answered Steve.

  
_"Yeah, easier said than done"_ , Bucky thought to himself, but still quickly grabbed his coat and got the hell out of the house.

  
**************

  
SHIELD's offices were bursting with activity when Bucky walked in. He breathed in relief, his step-brother and father hadn't arrived just yet.

  
Tony smiled when he spotted the long-haired man through the other workers, putting an arm around his shoulders and guiding toward what was probably the largest building window Bucky had ever seen in his entire life.

  
And in front of said window, stood the meanest looking man Bucky had ever seen in entire life.

  
Black coat, bald head, an eye-patch, he looked like a James Bond villain on freakin' steroids.

  
But still, he smiled like he was greeting his best friend when he saw Bucky.

  
"Ah! You must be the one that Tony talked to me about. Yucky, is it?"

  
"Uhm, it's Bucky, actually, sir." stammered the man in question, still slightly intimated by Mr. Fury.

  
"Well Bucky, Buckyo, Buckaroo, whatever you want to be called, any man that can help us finally fish Captain America out of these damn waters after all these years is an incredible asset inside our books. So, what do you say we go over some visuals and see if that spirit friend of yours recognizes anything. What do you say?" Nick asked wit a glint in his remaining eye.

  
Bucky was about to answer...

  
When the doors of the office burst open once again,

  
And,

  
_"Hold it right there!"_

  
Came the booming voice of Alexander Pierce, his son Brock in tow.

  
Several people tried to stop the two men, but Nick held up a hand.

  
"What's going on here? Who the hell are you people?"

  
Pierce adjusted his now crooked-tie around his neck and deposited a huge file onto the desk that was separating him and Mr. Fury.

  
"Sir, my name is Alexander Pierce, I am James Buchanan Barnes's father and I am telling you that you are about to commit a grave mistake trusting that boy over there." he responded, while pointing at the direction of where his son was standing.

  
Bucky swallowed thickly as he stared at the folder his step-dad had brought along with him.

  
He'd recognize these papers anywhere.

  
Nick crossed his arms in incredulity. "Oh yeah and why is that?"

  
Pierce smiled widely as he opened the first page of his stack of papers. "What I have here is James' complete psychological history. I would have been here much sooner but the hospital these babies were in was an hour away. Perhaps you'd like to know more about who you're about to take such an extravagant trip with." he proposed.

  
Turning his head toward Bucky, who stood there looking at the ground and saying nothing, then back at the older man, he indicated at Pierce to continue with a wave of the hand.

  
Pierce's eyes were sparkling. Another fish ready to be reeled in and with this one, he'd take back Bucky's credibility as a bonus.

  
"James Barnes, after being discharged from Iraq back in 2009 due to cowardly leaving his battalion behind, came to me one rainy night, homeless and armless. After accepting to take him inside my home, giving him food that I paid with my own pockets and lending him a roof that I deservedly inherited from my dear, dear late wife, he claimed by the next morning that he hadn't been able to sleep because, and I quote: _"The voices! They keep slipping out and I keep hearing them! The voices!_ " and so, as the good, concerned father that I've always been and for his own safety as well as the people around him, I made sure that my son was in the best care possible.

And so, as you can see here, he spent the next two years inside _Insight Hospital_ , right down in New Jersey. He was diagnosed by the great Dr. Zola with auditory hallucinations stemming from a trauma that he suffered when his mother and sister died in a train accident just before he went to war. Why he did in fact get picked up to get in Iraq when he hadn't been treated yet escapes me, but still. And so, with some good blocking techniques as well as some great migraine medication, he'd been doing well ever since I took him under my wings and inside my home once more. But, as you can see, only seven months after getting out of that place he needs to get back in there and _fast_! Because I mean, wanting to save Captain America because he's seeing his ghost, really? Who inside their right mind would ever believe someone with this kind of history?"

  
Tears were streaming down Bucky's face. He saw Nick check out page after page of the file, then turning his head at him with questions written all over his face.

  
"Is what's he saying really true, Barnes?" that black man asked.

  
"I...I..." Bucky tried to respond and looked at his step-father and step-brother's triumphant grins.

  
A gentle whisper came by his ear.

  
_"Let them out and they'll guide you in the right direction."_

  
Bucky's tears suddenly stopped running. Steve was right as always and for the first time since what he thought was a curse, Bucky accepted whatever he'd received as a gift.

  
And inside his mind, he let the door for the Spirits wide open.

And he focused.

And he listened, boy did he listened.

And his head wasn't hurting anymore.

Bucky opened his eyes.

 

"Dr. Zola was wrong." he finally said, a smile slowly appearing on his face.

  
Everyone whipped their heads to look at the long-haired man, including Pierce.

  
In a mocking tone, the older man scoffed: "What the hell is this wacko yakking about now?"

 

But Bucky didn't even nudge an inch, his eyes staring straight into his step-father's direction as he declared:

  
"I said, Dr. Zola was wrong. The voices didn't start after mom and Rebecca died, they started after I went back from the war. After an IED blew my arm right off while I tried to protect one of my injured men. After I got off the plane with a Purple Heart on myself and no one at the gate to greet me, even after I called you to say that I was coming home."

  
He took one step toward his step-father, as defiant as the Soldier that he'd been back in Iraq.

  
"It happened after I went to the cemetery to see my mom and my sister, the first person to visit them ever since they died, after you and Brock _promised_ me you wouldn't leave them alone while I was gone." he continued as he took another step.

  
"Oh please, your sister and mother have been worm food since before the last decade even came around. How in the world could they know or even care if somebody visited them or not?" retorted Pierce.

  
"Because they told me that they cared!" seethed Bucky, now standing inches away from Pierce's face. "They cared and they told me about their loneliness and how happy they were that somebody finally came after all this time."

  
Pierce was waving at Nick and the others around the office. "You see? You see how unstable and out of control this guy is? He needs to be arrested and be put away this instant!" he ordered.

  
But no one budged. "No actually, I kinda wanna hear the rest of this story." answered Nick.

  
The others around him all nodded their heads.

  
Bucky smiled slightly at the sign of approval and turned his head toward the piece of trash that was his father. "But they weren't the only ones that you never came to see at that place, weren't there? What about Sally and Dan and Trish?"

  
"My...my parents and my aunt...how the hell do you know their...their names" I never told them to anybody." stammered Pierce, his former taunting posture now long-gone.

  
Bucky turned his eyes towards the coward that was his step-brother. "And what about Irene and Luke and little Bobby from down the streets, huh? Are they all worm food too?"

  
"How...how do you know about my childhood pals and my neighbor? I never once talked about them..." Brock was the one now stammering.

  
Bucky chuckled in mirth. "Of course you didn't. Of course you didn't see them or hear them all like I did that night. Because to the two of you, when people die they cease to exist and they don't matter anymore, at least not enough to even mention their names to anybody. But let me tell you something, they do in fact continue to exist after they die and they do in fact matter, to the people that still cared about them, at least. And it's those people you've been getting your yayas from, huh? Those poor people that have nobody else in the world to turn to and that are suffering because someone that they love is now gone, those are the kind of people that you decided to exploit and wrung all the cash that you can get out of their misery, isn't it?

And yeah, I was part of the _"Hydra Readings"_ scam, I admit it, and I'll gladly make it up to all of the people that I've hurt even if it takes the rest of my life to do so, but what choice did I really have? You kept threatening me over and over to get me back inside that loony bin every time I ever even brought up the fact that all of this was wrong. I had no one else but you guys when my only flesh and blood died and what did you do when I needed help? You got rid of me at the first occasion by paying some quack that made me believe that I was crazy to listen to what was happening to me and that I should instead listen to what _you_ had to say, because you were always right and I was always wrong."

  
"But I'm not wrong on that one, am I, _Xandy_?" he added, shaking his head out of pity.

  
The older man, that had been triumphantly smirking just a minute beforehand, had now been reduced to a pathetic, rambling mess.

  
"No! Okay! He's wrong... okay! I'm right, he's wrong! Xandy's _always_ right! Get him! Or else I'm going to..."

It was when Pierce and Brock made a move to grab Bucky that Fury had enough of this shit-show. "Alright, alright. I think we're done here." he exclaimed.

And with a snap if the fingers, made SHIELD security grab both criminals and drag them away to their rightful place in life: the police station.

Nick, without breaking a sweat, simply closed the file that had been opened right in front of him, wrapped an arm around Bucky's shoulders and simply asked:

  
"Well, now... _where were we_?"

  
*****************

  
_"I remember that I felt last of the sun rays hitting the left side of my face when I decided to send the plane down."_

  
_"I remember seeing also seeing the Ursa Major beginning to shine right in front of me when I was talking to Peggy."_

  
_"There was a chunk of ice, about maybe three or four times my size, that detached itself from a large iceberg when the plane hit it."_

  
Those were the the things that were whispered right inside Bucky's ear as he and the rest of the SHIELD's retrieval team were hard at work looking over maps, weather reports of that time and everything the like, standing inside a small boat in the middle of the Arctic waters.

  
And it was by the time someone finally called out:

  
_"Found something! It's the Valkyrie!"_

  
That Steve finally reappeared before Bucky's eyes, but in a paler fashion this time around.

  
The blond man tried to hug the other man once more, gathering as much strength as he could, only to pass through him like there was nothing standing in front of him.

  
Steve backed about two steps behind him. "I guess now that since we're close to where my body is, I don't have that much strength left, do I?" he tried to say with a smile, but his sad eyes conveyed a whole other kind of emotion.

  
Bucky wrapped his arm around himself as he whispered: "Yeah, I guess so." His own eyes began to water when he noticed that Steve was beginning to flicker gently.

  
And someone else triumphantly yelled out: _"We found him, we found Captain America!"_

  
Both men turned their stare from the interlocutor towards one another. "So, I guess you're going to be joining all those people that you care about after all, huh?" Bucky asked.

  
But to his surprise, Steve slowly shook his head and with a trembling hand, reached out as if to touch Bucky's cheek. "Not all of them." he whispered with a regretful smile....

  
Right before disappearing once again.

  
And Bucky was left there, cheek untouched, silently responding to pretty much to no one: "I guess the only kiss and the only date we'll ever get to have is when I join you over there in another seventy years, isn't it Captain America?"


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve awakes and finds Bucky.
> 
> Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there you go, last chapter! I wanna thank everybody who commented, bookmarked and kudosed this story. I truly appreciated it. :D

While _"Winter Solutions"_ hadn't been as an instantaneous success as _"Hydra Readings"_ had been from the get-go, that didn't mean that it wasn't making its mark since its one-month inauguration.

  
And while Bucky had read and heard everything about Steve Rogers' miraculous recovery after being frozen for almost seventy years in the icy waters of the Atlantic, he hadn't dared to go visit the other man.

  
Because, really, what could he say?

  
_"Hello, your spirit came to me while you were sleeping underwater and I helped you retrieve your body back from the bottom of the Arctic. So... 'sucks about the Dodgers, huh?"_

  
The other man would probably look at him like he was nutso and then _he_ 'd probably be the one to put him back in the nuthouse and not his step-father, who was doing some much deserved jail-time along with his step-brother, after the both of them admitted every fault they'd committed, from Bucky's unjust internment to all of the people they'd scam thousands of dollars money out of.

  
And as for Bucky himself, he was paying his due back to society, using his extraordinary gift to make up to all the people he'd helped wrong in the past.

  
He was gathering his things inside his large back-pack when his client of the day, Mrs. Hollswell, came bursting through the door of her kitchen.

  
"My dear, you must come quick!"

  
Bucky turned toward the elderly woman with a frown.

  
"What is it, Mrs. Hollswell? Did something happened after I let Ronnie back inside?"

  
Rosaline smiled and took Bucky's brand new metallic hand (forget the beige one he'd been hoping for when he'd been staying with his step-dad, this one was expressly made for hm by one Tony Stark) inside her wrinkled ones. "Oh, no, dear! Everything's fine on that end, thank you. But there's someone at the door for you!" she exclaimed, dragging the long-haired man along with her.

  
Someone at the door for him? Who could possibly know that he was spending the afternoon here?

  
These questions spun inside his head, but not for long.

  
Because right in front of Rosaline Hoswell's front door stood none other than...

  
"Steve Rogers?" Bucky nearly squeaked.

  
The man stood there, breathing heavily as if he'd just run a marathon, looking at him with questioning eyes.

  
"I...I know you, don't I?" asked the blond man.

  
"I...I don't....I mean..." stuttered the brunet one.

  
Steve stepped further inside the house, making Bucky back off a couple of inches along with him.

  
"Your face, I've seen it before. In my dreams, in my fantasies. Every time that I close my eyes, I see you. I woke up just three days ago after being asleep for over seventy years and the only thing I've been thinking about was to find someone named Bucky. Are you Bucky?" Steve implored, grabbing the other man by the shoulders.

  
Seeing his entire world inside Steve's eyes, Bucky could only nod.

  
"And I think that I owe you a date, don't I?" Steve asked once again, his face no longer confused.

  
"You...you owe something else first, actually." Bucky finally whispered, looking down at the ground.

  
But Steve's finger under his chin made him look back up. He was looking at Bucky like he'd just found the universe's greatest treasure.

  
"Of course. After all, you _did_ say that you were the kind of guy who liked to do these kind of things out of order." he whispered before leaning in and giving Bucky the one thing he'd been craving for ever since he'd shown up out of the blue, whacked in right on the nose and changed his life forever.

 

 


End file.
